Noah’s back arched in pleasure. Lightning crackled down his spine. He closed his eyes and rode the waves of euphoria crashing over him.
“I’m close, baby, you’re so—”
Noah’s phone started buzzing on the nightstand, loud against the hardwood surface. Not the single sharp buzz of a text, but a constant thing. A phone call.
Noah had heard of bonerkillers before, but he’d never had his own killed so quickly, so thoroughly, as when he saw Angela’s name.
“It’s Angela.”
Ramin came off his now-limp sex and crawled out from under the covers, face wet and shiny in the morning light. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Everything okay?”
Noah wanted to kiss him, but his phone kept buzzing.
“She doesn’t usually call this early.” Noah’s heart twisted with anxiety as he answered. “Hello?”
“Hi,” Angela said, breathing hard. “Do you have a minute?”
Her voice was cracking and tired. Noah’s throat clamped up immediately.
“Are you okay? Is Jake?”
“We’re both okay,” she said. “I promise. Jake and I are both fine.”
There was something in her voice that set his heart to hammering, though.
“But…?”
“But Jake is in the hospital.”
Noah’s world cracked in two.
He’d read once—Elizabeth Stone, he wanted to say—that when you’re a parent, your heart lives outside your body.
His heart wasn’t just outside his body; it was in another city, squeezing and beating out of tempo as he paced in front of the bed.
Jake was in the hospital. Hissonwas in the hospital.
He’d woken up in the middle of the night with stomach pain. Angela had blamed the late-night gelato at first. But when the vomitingstarted, she’d taken him to the nearest hospital, where he was diagnosed with appendicitis and sent in for emergency surgery.
“Don’t worry. It went fine. He’s already in recovery,” Angela assured him.
“He’s in…” Noah grasped his hair. “Angela, when did you take him?”
“A little after midnight.”
“A little after…”
Noah glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was past eight.
Jake had been in the hospital foreight hours. And Angela was only now telling him.
Noah clamped down the anger that threatened to burst from his chest. He clenched his teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Angela’s voice was light. Careful. “It was late. There was nothing you could do. We had things under control.”
That wasn’t good enough. This was hissonthey were talking about.
He wasn’t there when his son needed him.
